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Re: SIGHTING: Andrea Pitzer's "Nabokov Wins One for the Islanders"
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Juan Martinez: "Andrea Pitzer, author of The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov, wrote an exceedingly funny McSweeney's bit where she replaces the eponymous hockey-player with the writer: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/nabokov-wins-one-for-the-islanders (This is no, incidentally, the first time Nabokov appears in McSweeney's. See also Nabokov Didn't Have to Put Up with Payroll and Less is Best, Mr. Nabokov.)
Jansy Mello: The three contributions were clever and amusing.. "Less is Best" as the conclusion of M.Sacks research was really funny (and familiar).
I added Nabokov's sentences (in blue) for a fair comparison between the "improved" lines and Nabokov's own, in "Torpid Smoke"
The editor supplied his own kind of "animation" ("blinked", "blanketed" instead of VN's solitary "streetlamps...taking a picture of the lace curtain's design"), in an excitingly "torpid" stroke...
Less is Best, Mr. Nabokov.
by Mike Sacks
"In April I submitted Vladimir Nabokov's short story "Torpid Smoke" to seven online manuscript evaluation services. Other than changing the title to "Russian Smoke" and Nabokov's name to Jonathan Shade, I left the piece unaltered. My online editors had some praise for the story, but also some suggestions on how to improve it".
Sample: [ ] Don't overwhelm your readers with extraneous description. You have to leave something to the imagination of the reader, especially these days. In the past, this overly descriptive writing has worked, but sadly, we live in an era where the attention span (even of a voracious reader) is not quite what it used to be.
A good way to get a piece moving is to make the action more immediate and exciting:
"The streetlamps hanging in the dusk suddenly blinked on all the way to Bayerischer Platz. Every object in the dark (as opposed to unlit) room shifted. The design on the lace curtains caught the light and blanketed the furnishings." You can see how this has made the description active, immediate and snappy.
"WHEN the streetlamps hanging in the dusk came on, practically in unison, all the way to Bayerischer Platz, every object in the unlit room shifted slightly under the influence of the outdoor rays, which started by taking a picture of the lace curtain's design."
Ask yourself here: "What moves the story in this sentence?" While the image of the teeth/tongue is clever, it is not, in my opinion, moving the story along. On the contrary, it is slowing it down.
[ "...offered him a dependable method of measuring and marking himself off; that method he found only when in a burst of agility the tactile tip of his tongue, performing a sudden twist in his mouth (as if dashing to check, half-awake, if all was well), palpated and started to worry a bit of soft foreign matter, a shred of boiled beef firmly lodged in his teeth; whereupon he reflected how many times, in some nineteen years, it had changed, that invisible but tangible householdry of teeth, which the tongue would get used to until a filling came out, leaving a great pit that presently would be refurnished/ He was now prompted to move not so much by the shamelessly frank silence behind the door as by the urge to seek out a nice, pointed little tool, to aid the solitary blind toiler[. ]The light also fell on a safety pin. He unbent it, and following his tongue's rather fussy directions, removed the mote of meat, swallowed it - better than any dainties; after which the contented organ calmed down."
This sentence is far too long and leaves the reader lost in a maze of images. The mind needs short, quick photographic images to grab onto.
Beware of being overly wordy.[ ]
.
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Jansy Mello: The three contributions were clever and amusing.. "Less is Best" as the conclusion of M.Sacks research was really funny (and familiar).
I added Nabokov's sentences (in blue) for a fair comparison between the "improved" lines and Nabokov's own, in "Torpid Smoke"
The editor supplied his own kind of "animation" ("blinked", "blanketed" instead of VN's solitary "streetlamps...taking a picture of the lace curtain's design"), in an excitingly "torpid" stroke...
Less is Best, Mr. Nabokov.
by Mike Sacks
"In April I submitted Vladimir Nabokov's short story "Torpid Smoke" to seven online manuscript evaluation services. Other than changing the title to "Russian Smoke" and Nabokov's name to Jonathan Shade, I left the piece unaltered. My online editors had some praise for the story, but also some suggestions on how to improve it".
Sample: [ ] Don't overwhelm your readers with extraneous description. You have to leave something to the imagination of the reader, especially these days. In the past, this overly descriptive writing has worked, but sadly, we live in an era where the attention span (even of a voracious reader) is not quite what it used to be.
A good way to get a piece moving is to make the action more immediate and exciting:
"The streetlamps hanging in the dusk suddenly blinked on all the way to Bayerischer Platz. Every object in the dark (as opposed to unlit) room shifted. The design on the lace curtains caught the light and blanketed the furnishings." You can see how this has made the description active, immediate and snappy.
"WHEN the streetlamps hanging in the dusk came on, practically in unison, all the way to Bayerischer Platz, every object in the unlit room shifted slightly under the influence of the outdoor rays, which started by taking a picture of the lace curtain's design."
Ask yourself here: "What moves the story in this sentence?" While the image of the teeth/tongue is clever, it is not, in my opinion, moving the story along. On the contrary, it is slowing it down.
[ "...offered him a dependable method of measuring and marking himself off; that method he found only when in a burst of agility the tactile tip of his tongue, performing a sudden twist in his mouth (as if dashing to check, half-awake, if all was well), palpated and started to worry a bit of soft foreign matter, a shred of boiled beef firmly lodged in his teeth; whereupon he reflected how many times, in some nineteen years, it had changed, that invisible but tangible householdry of teeth, which the tongue would get used to until a filling came out, leaving a great pit that presently would be refurnished/ He was now prompted to move not so much by the shamelessly frank silence behind the door as by the urge to seek out a nice, pointed little tool, to aid the solitary blind toiler[. ]The light also fell on a safety pin. He unbent it, and following his tongue's rather fussy directions, removed the mote of meat, swallowed it - better than any dainties; after which the contented organ calmed down."
This sentence is far too long and leaves the reader lost in a maze of images. The mind needs short, quick photographic images to grab onto.
Beware of being overly wordy.[ ]
.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/